The Steamboat Saluda Disaster

April 9, 1852

Photographed by Tom Bosse, October 29, 2015

1. The Steamboat Saluda Disaster Marker

Click or scan to see
this page online

Photographed by Tom Bosse, October 29, 2015

2. Heritage Park - Saluda Memorial

This panel is on the leftmost panel of the lattice wall.

Touch for directions.

Corridor.

Midwest,

Corridor,

Belt,

Corridor.

America,

Hemisphere,

World,

Anglosphere.

Culture,

Purchase,

South.

1. Cause of the

Photographed by Tom Bosse, October 29, 2015

3. Bell Tower Plaque

This bell tower stands in memory of the victims of the steamboat Saluda explosion on April 9, 1852. It also honors the many Lexington citizens who came to the aid of the passengers. The Saluda’s original 1949 bell now sits in front of the First Christian Church in Savannah, Missouri. This 1847 bell, with its similar Diana the Huntress design, wad donated to the Lexington Historical Association by Pierre Collobert. The tower was dedicated on April 9, 2002, with the participation of Saluda decedents.

explosion.

Soon after reaching St. Joseph, I received a letter from Mr. Holmes telling what day he expected to start from St. Louis, and that he would be on board the Seeloday. Our next news from St. Louis was that the boat, while on its way up the river, had been blown up, that four hundred lives had been lost, and that all of the freight was lost. A chill of horror ran through our hearts, as it did throughout the land. Many households were to bow in sorrow, if not in submission, at the loss of some loved one. Four hundred lives lost, and that our friend Holmes had escaped was scarcely to be thought of.

All of the freight Iost! And we knew that our food stuffs were gone. The loss of Mr. Holmes would be a doubly great loss to me, for we, as partners in the undertaking, had been bound under a forfeiture of two hundred dollars each, to the nineteen men who started from my house with us, should we fail to take them through to California. Thar day a boat came in from down the river, but brought no word from Mr. Holmes, nor of him.

Photographed by Tom Bosse, October 29, 2015

4. Bell Tower

I determined to go down the following day, to learn something about them; should it be good news or bad, we could wait no longer in suspense. A boat came up just before mine was to go down, and when it landed I saw our men upon her deck. ’Twas a joyful thought to Mr. Holmes that he had reached his men in safety, his eyes were as if still riveted on some awful scene. He took my hand with a warm grasp, but he was speechless. Large tears coursed unchecked over his manly face. I will not call them womanish tears; for ’twas manly to weep with those who wept, to weep for those bereaved.

It was some little time before he could control his emotions, and could give us any detail of the disaster. When he did, it was with no parade of sensational narrative that he recounted to w us the events of the terrible catastrophe, but from an overburdened heart, still strangely horrified, that he said to us: “I saw, as I approached our boat, that it was very heavily loaded, I feared that it would give us trouble; but as I was to be only a passenger, and not wishing to make myself offensively conspicuous, I kept my fears in check. After we had started, and were in a bend in the river, at which point the stream was very rapid, and the boat could not, for its freight, work its way over the waves, and after it had made two attempts and failed, I said to the captain, ‘Throw out a line and let a hundred of us get out and pull on the rope, and help you over this.’

“‘No! I won’t. I’ll

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run it over myself, or blow her to h--l.’ ‘Have you ever blowed one up?’ I asked. ‘Yes, I have, and I done the old thing good justice, too.’ I went around to the engine room and saw that the safety valve was tied down. I said to Cole, ‘That boiler will burst and we’re a shipwrecked set. Let’s go to the stern.’

“We had scarcely reached it when the deck was raised, everything rose up, the boat was instantly shattered to pieces, and scattered upon the waste of waters. How we escaped I cannot tell. Hundreds of bodies of dead and dying were mingled in that sea of blood, for the blood of mangled bodies was flowing fast and free.

“The living were making loud moans, calling in their anguish for help; some calling for their friends, children for their parents, and the parent for her child. A mangled part of the captain’s body was found upon a shed about four hundred feet from the water. He had lost everything, and there was nothing but the few shreds of clothing left upon his body, and his upturned face, by which one could identify the perpetrator of that wicked deed.”

Holmes was determined to be a man and being no longer able to help any of the wreckers, he turned his attention to his own business. He had had the goods insured in St. Louis, and proposed that we sell the insurance to the merchant of whom we must get our supplies.